Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai at home with his dog (Picture: Pete Millson)

John Peel loved Mogwai. The Glasgow-based band led by Stuart Braithwaite have spent the past 10 years making mostly instrumental music that exists somewhere beyond the fringes of traditional rock, and Peel was their biggest champion. So it's fitting that Government Commissions, an album of BBC sessions dominated by ones recorded for the DJ's show, has become something of a tribute to the man.

"John Peel was very much alive when we put the record together so it wasn't intended that way," says Braithwaite, countering the suggestion. "But his influence on the band goes deep. We discovered all the music we love, from Sonic Youth to a crazy old blues man, from his show. He was a legend and a wonderful guy; the only person I can think of who worked for a major corporation for decades and remained unchanged by it. His integrity was such that you knew he would be playing the same music if he were working for the BBC or Norwich Hospital Radio."

Braithwaite picks us up in a long-unwashed Vauxhall Corsa from Glasgow airport to drive us to his countryside house, and subjects us to the kind of music/white noise that can cause an upset stomach on bumpy stretches, while holding forth on the importance of road safety and seat belt usage. At the - it has to be said - rather messy house that he shares with his wife and two extremely excitable dogs, he is so enthusiastic about digging out his favourite records that you sense an integrity and a passion to match that of his late mentor.

Braithwaite presents his most recent purchase: a five-CD wooden box set of blues, gospel and sermon recordings from 1930s and 40s America called Goodbye Babylon. One of the blues singers featured is Skip James, who led something of a double life: on the one hand he wrote religious songs about the importance of Christian morality; on the other he embraced wickedness in word and deed, spending long stretches in jail and ending up with a venereal disease that caused his penis to fall off. "He had some very strange views on racial equality," says Braithwaite, studying the liner notes to the box set. "He concluded that white people were better than black people, but that he was more like a white person anyway."

He takes us upstairs to a room filled with so many records, Star Wars toys, musical equipment and other useless ephemera that it is hard to move around without fear of treading on an impulse purchase from eBay. "Every time I buy random stuff, my wife has a go at me," says Braithwaite as he searches for an album by the extremely noisy American bass/drums duo Lightning Bolt, "but I have the excuse of telling her that I need it for my next record." He also has the advantage of living next door to a well-off psychiatrist who pays hundreds of pounds for cult records from the 1970s. "When I told him I was doing this, he said I had to borrow his ultra-rare pressing of the first album by [German band] Neu! I had to explain that nobody would care how rare it was."

Other records Braithwite cites as important are Heroes by David Bowie ("my favourite guitar solo of all time"), the debut by 1960s garage band the Sonics, and the Velvet Underground's first album. "Heroin was the first song I learned to play, but I've never taken heroin and I don't think anyone's life has been improved by doing so." The Stooges, Iggy Pop's old band, also rate a mention. "The great thing about the Stooges is that they wanted to be like the Rolling Stones and the Doors, and they were so much better than both," he says. "They blew away what they were trying to rip off. Jim Morrison's lyrics are about as deep as the average puddle, but they did inspire Iggy Pop."

By the time Braithwaite drives us back to the airport and introduces us to the bleak grinding doom of a "sludge metal" duo called "Sunn O)))", it's clear his band are going to continue cheerfully on their own path regardless of changing trends: "I've solved the problem of a trendy haircut by losing my hair." You can tell which band is fashionable by the interest of Kate Moss, and Braithwaite's encounter with the model marks Mogwai's place in the style hierarchy. "She started talking to me at a Franz Ferdinand gig," he says. "Then it became apparent that I wasn't a member of Franz Ferdinand. She lost interest soon after that."

Need to know

First record bought: Disintegration by the Cure

Favourite film: Hero

Record to grab in an emergency: Songs of Love and Hate by Leonard Cohen